Kochi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has told the court that the banned organisation Popular Front of India (PFI) maintained a secret wing.

The NIA also said the secret wing worked at the organisation's offices and made a hitlist of people from other communities. "The secret wing had a statewide network and was responsible for data collection and the preparation of the list," the probe agency told the court in Kochi.

The NIA also told the court that it has evidence of IS links between the leaders.

The disclosure was part of its request to the court to extend the remand period of the arrested PFI state leaders.

The court extended the remand period of the accused for another 90 days.

In near-simultaneous raids across the country, a multi-agency operation spearheaded by the NIA on September 22 led to the arrest of 106 activists of the PFI in 11 states for allegedly supporting terror activities in the country, officials had said.

The maximum number of arrests was made in Kerala (22), followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka (20 each), Tamil Nadu (10), Assam (9), Uttar Pradesh (8), Andhra Pradesh (5), Madhya Pradesh (4), Puducherry and Delhi (3 each) and Rajasthan (2).

The NIA had raised serious allegations against the banned PFI and its arrested leaders and claimed that the seized documents during the raids contain highly incriminating materials targeting prominent leaders of a particular community.

The agency also alleged that the radical Islamist outfit encouraged youth to join terrorist groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda.